Converse to Host Free Public Reading by Eclectic National Award-Winning Poet
Albert Goldbarth, the only living two-time winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry, will give a free public reading Tuesday, Oct. 9 at 8 p.m. in the Barnet Room of the Montgomery Student Center at Converse College. His reading, which is free and open to the public, is made possible by Converse’s Coker Visiting Writers. For more information, call 596-9000.
Author of some thirty volumes of poetry and prose, Goldbarth was twice awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry for his books Heaven and Earth: A Cosmology and Saving Lives.
According to Rick Mulkey, associate professor of English and director of Converse’s Creative Writing program, a reading by Goldbarth is not to be missed. “(Albert) is an avid collector of 1940’s/50’s scifi, disneyana collectables, comic books, while also being a scholar of history, the sciences, and, of course poetry,” Mulkey said. “He is an incredibly intelligent and eclectic person which is reflected in his writings by the interweaving of popular culture and high culture elements into parts of his poetry.
Critic Judith Kitchen has said that “Albert Goldbarth just may be the American poet of his generation for the ages. Often humorous but always serious, Goldbarth combines erudite research, pop-culture fanaticism, and personal anecdote in ways that make his writings among the most stylistically recognizable in the literary world.”
Graywolf Press has published Goldbarth’s newest book, The Kitchen Sink: New and Selected Poems, 1972-2007. Goldbarth has been Distinguished Professor of Humanities in the Department of English at Wichita State University since 1985.
